


SPG 30 Day Challenge- Romance! Adventure! Classified Ads!

by forgetcanon



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: 30 day challenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:19:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgetcanon/pseuds/forgetcanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A thirty day challenge that I only got a week into. You may find it enjoyable. My mother tells me it's good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1: A day in the life of one of the robots

Rabbit generally powers on around eight, long enough that The Spine has had several hours to himself but still slightly before The Jon. He boils the kettle for Steve, has several glasses of water, and oils his hands. Sometimes Steve helps, but most of the time the S.O.U.N.D. engineer isn't awake enough yet to do much more than stare blankly into his tea and whatever he has for breakfast. 

On this particular morning, Steve broke the silence after his third sip of tea. (The first had burnt his mouth and the second had been a test to see if it would still burn his mouth.) 

"Pass me the paper?" 

Rabbit passed him the paper and resumed oiling his hands. "'S not sunday, y'know."

"There are more things to read than the comics," Steve said calmly. 

"Like what?"

Steve thought. If he answered honestly, Rabbit would try to dismantle each of his arguments and it would end in Steve being irrationally angry that a robot had just declared the state of the economy irrelevant just because humans had created money so it was their own damn fault it got them into trouble. He went with, "The classified ads." 

Rabbit paused in his oiling to look up the term, before snorting. "Steve, why're you reading those? Y-you already gotta job, and if you w-wanna meet someone all ya gotta do is go to a bar or somethin'." 

Steve grinned. He was onto something. "Oh, but Rabbit, there's so much more to classified ads. Most of them are about jobs and dating, yes, but there  _are_  the occasional gems. People selling swords. People asking if anyone knows what a brownie looks like. People offering their services as an exorcist. It's interesting."

When Michael came in for lunch, Rabbit hadn't finishing oiling his hands and was instead carefully cutting out his favorite ads and pasting them in a binder labeled '2012.' 

"Wat'cha got there, Rabs?" Michael asked, opening the fridge.

"Classified ads," Rabbit said happily. 

Michael froze, closing the fridge again. "...why?" Visions of Rabbit calling up Single White Females Looking For A Good Time danced around his brain. He'd probably show up with his accordion and The Jon, Michael thought hysterically, and take her to the park. 

"They're interestin'!"

_oh god no._ Michael was torn between checking which ads he was cutting out to maybe work out a way to warn people, and not getting involved in any way so that later he could plead ignorance.

"There's a buncha students lookin' for someone to pretend to be a murderer for a class project. Tha murderer has to- has to- has to carry a thirty pound turkey and a basting brush for it ta count." 

Michael crossed the room in two steps, leaning over Rabbit's shoulder. "What? Really?" 

Rabbit nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! And some otha guy is complainin' 'bout how everybody keeps callin' him an' his friend gay!" 

An hour later, Michael excused himself from photocopying old newspapers in the library (the Walter Mansion tended to buy any newspaper that involved the family in any way, which lead to an extensive newspaper archive) and went down to the kitchen to grab some leftovers and a pitcher of water. He found Sam eating the leftovers and eyeing the oil can and newspaper scraps on the table.

"Where's The Jon?" Sam asked.

"Oh no, this is Rabbit. Steve taught him about classified ads."

Sam looked horrified. 

"No, not  _those_  ones. Believe me, I thought it too. The jokey ones. The ones about hiring someone to knock down your school and stuff." Michael grinned. "We've been going through the archives upstairs for like, an hour. Did you know that my grandfather was probably hired through a classified ad?"

Around four, The Spine got suspicious at the lack of noise from anywhere else in the house and pinged Rabbit on the wifi.

_What?_  Rabbit asked.  _Busy._

_Where is everyone?_

_Up here in the library. Come up!_

The Spine hesitated. He went up, and found Steve, Sam, and Michael all carefully cutting out pieces of paper, occasionally chuckling, while Rabbit and The Jon carefully folded and unfolded newspapers. As he watched, Rabbit went over the the photocopy machine and started copying one.

"What on earth is going on?" The Spine asked. "Are we planning to send threatening messages through cut-out scraps of paper?"

The Jon thought about it. "Probably not."

"Classified ads," Steve explained. "They're hilarious."

The binder marked '2012' was a lot fuller than it had been that morning. 

The Spine eyed it, before reading over Steve's shoulder as he cut out an ad offering to sell an '87 Buick that had been painted bright green with polka dots. The price was extraordinarily cheap. 

After a moment he picked up a newspaper and started scanning the ads as well. 


	2. Day 2: A fic based off your favorite song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That'll Be the Way Home has always been rather interesting to me, especially because I find it hard to believe that any of the bots actually /think/ that way after having fought in four wars. It's always seemed to me to be more of a pretty lie that they sing to reassure soldiers, instead of what they'd actually believe. But, in this case? The pretty lie is a beautiful truth.

_The following document, retrieved from the archives of the Walter Library after the Orange Matter fire of 2301, is suspected to be a part of the Binder system the Walter Bots used to keep track of things. By early 2200, of course, they had switched over from an analog system to being completely digital, so all of that was saved, but this piece is suspected to be from The Spine's binders, circa 2000. It contains a letter and transcripts of two videos. Searching for the videos in the Walter Database had no results, so it is likely that the originals are forever lost. Either that or hidden in some obscure folder somewhere._

\--

The Letter

From: Alice_Halden@gmail.com  
To: TheSpine@cavalcadium.org  
Subject: That'll Be The Way Home

Hello The Spine. My name is Alice, and recently my lover James joined the Peace Corps. He's been in Panama for about four months, now. Writing letters gets them to him in about two weeks, and he can call us but only when he's in town, which is not often. But I knew that something was wrong, so I asked, and he said that he missed us terribly.

James has never really been far from home, you see, he even grew up in this town. Neal and I moved here for college and ended up staying. We live a block away from his mom's place, and he knows everyone he sees on the street. It's hard to be far away from that, and he still has a year and a half left to go. I mean he loves it, I don't doubt that at all, but it's hard.

About three weeks ago I heard Brass Goggles on the radio and I looked it up, and the last time he called I sung him That'll Be The Way Home. (Neither Neal nor I have blue eyes, but we did name a star once as a joke, so there's that.) He absolutely loved it. He made me print out the lyrics to pretty much all of your songs and send them to him. That was a thick letter. 

But he called me yesterday, and he seemed happier than he's been in weeks. He said the homesickness is wearing off, and he just seemed... brighter. 

So thanks, I guess. I know he'd have done fine anyway, but your music really helped him. 

Best Wishes,  
Alice Halden (and Neal Turner)  
  
\--

Video #1   
_It appears to be a transcript of an unlisted video on Youtube. It's too bad that YouTube was forever lost when northern California fell into the ocean during the Maple Wars._

[The Spine leans back from the camera. He's holding his guitar. The background is of the Hall of Wires, lit a bit more brightly than normal for this video.]

The Spine: Hey, Alice, Neal. James, too, when you get back. 

The Spine: I got your email and I'm very glad that it helped your friend. I wrote that song quite a while ago, back during World War II, and I'm glad it still comforts people far from home. I hope that James thrives in Panama, and if he manages to get internet access where he is, please do send him this. 

[The Spine sings That'll Be The Way Home. At the end, he nods and turns off the camera.]]

\--

Video #2   
 _This also appears to be an unlisted video._

[A man with brown hair and a green work apron sits in a chair, a woman with red hair leaning over his shoulder. It is obviously being filmed from a webcam. Behind them is a living room. A couch is visible to the left.]

Neal: Alice, this had better not be a screamer.

Alice: Trust me it's not. You'll love this. I swear.

[She clicks on something. Neal frowns, and then his eyes grow wide.]

Neal: Is that...?

Alice: Shh.

[The Spine's voice is audible in the background.]

Neal: Oh my God. 

[A break. The Spine has reached 'I hope James thrives in Panama.']

Neal: James is going to go apeshit.

Alice: Shh. 

[A break. The Spine starts to sing. Neal bites his knuckle, grinning widely.]

Neal: No, really, James is going to-

Alice: Shut up!

[They watch the video to the end. Neal is beaming at the screen, and Alice is shaking with laughter.]

Alice: I really hope he can get internet there. I mean, he mentioned internet cafés, right? They better get YouTube. 

Neal: But he's going to go crazy! Can you imagine? He'd get kicked out of the café for screaming! 

Alice: ooohh my god I can't freaking wait, he said he was in Penonome for the weekend, he better call again today. 

Neal: Thank you, The Spine.

Alice: Oh, are we sending this to him?

Neal: I thought that was why you were filming.

Alice: Well. Um. Okay. Sure. Why not? Thanks, The Spine. Seriously. 


	3. Day 3: 404 Error

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 404 Error: File not found. This was originally written for Cake!Spine.

Steve had been repairing a large section of the Hall of Wires when it happened. It stood to reason that one thing going massively wrong in a week was the quota, but it appeared that the universe wanted to thrust an extremely localized power surge on top of the rabid 2 story alligator, so Steve backed away from the wires, but not fast enough. A blurred form managed to knock him to the ground a moment before the electricity jumped to the nearby water-filled human, and so it chose instead to jump to the nearby metal-filled robot.

\--

He had woken up and he hadn't known who he was, but had a nagging feeling that he probably should. A man was leaning over him, and smiling in relief, and saying, "Hey, Spine, good to have you back."

"Is that my name?" The Spine asked in surprise. "It's pretty strange."

\--

Steve was coping with this, he was. He was definitely coping with this, in his traditional way. 

His traditional way was just avoiding what was bothering him until it stopped bothering him, in one way or another, so he had been working hard on fixing all the faulty microphones for the last few days.

He leaned back in his chair and took a long, hard look at the box of perfectly clean and bug-free microphones. 

"Now," he said to himself. "I can stay in here and unkink all the wires, or I can go and face it."

He stood up and takes a few steps towards the doorway. He turned and walked towards the wires. He stopped. 

Steve heaved a huge sigh, hating himself more and more, and walked out of the room, turning the lights off behind him. 

They were all hanging out in the living room, Rabbit and The Spine leaning over the couch as Michael and Sam gestured at something on the computer. The Spine immediately looked at him, his expression neutral. Steve looked back at him. 

Steve's Coping Method, Part Two: When done avoiding, run head first into it.

"So you're probably not getting your memories back?" he asked bluntly. 

The Spine- could they even call him that, anymore?- opened his mouth, closed it, and then shook his head mutely. Rabbit started to speak, but Steve spoke over him. 

"Alright. My name's Steve Negrete, I'm the S.O.U.N.D. engineer. Nice to meet you." He held out his hand.

The Spine stared. Everyone else was staring, too. It probably had something to do with the determined look on Steve's face. 

"I, um."

(The Spine had never done that, before. He didn't use filler words. He planned out his whole sentence. You could hear him say, 'Rabbit, that idea is uh stupid' as though 'uh' was another word in a sentence.)

"They told me about you," The Spine said after a moment. "About what happened, I mean. And I'm sorry."

Steve frowned. "Sorry?"

The Spine nodded. "I'm sorry."

Steve frowned harder. "What. You saved my life."

The automaton winced. "That's not what I.... I'm sorry that I, um, he? We? Him? That.... I lost my memories." The Spine paused again, looking away. He acts a lot like Michael, obviously using him as a template for body language, now. "I looked in the binders that the old Spine left, and it looks like you meant a lot to me." The Spine met his eyes, cautiously. "So, I'm sorry. That he probably isn't coming back. But I'd like to get to know you."

Steve stared, then went and sat down heavily in the other arm chair, before leaning forward and putting his head in his hands. His head hurt. Everything about this hurt, really, and he refused to cry in front of his old friend the first time he met him. 

"Sure," he said once his voice would be steady. "I'd like to get to know you, too."

\--

Steve goes back to his regular routine after that, as much as he can. He eats breakfast with Rabbit, he spots P-W VI's experiments, he provides a second opinion on Michael's songs, he fixes dinner every Thursday and Sunday night. After a few days, The Spine comes back to rehearsals. He has to relearn everything, from the songs to the jokes. 

The jokes are the hardest part. The Spine can't play the straight man. 

Rabbit grins. "Did you say Bobby Darin!"

The Jon joins in with an exhilarated, "Bobby Darin! Hooray!" The two of them proceed to explain how much they love Bobby Darin by yelling about it in unison. 

The Spine smiles and asks, "Who's Bobby Darin?"

The yelling stops for half an hour while they look Bobby Darin up. The Spine loves him, too.

Michael and Sam exchange looks, and then Steve shrugs. They rewrite the jokes. 

\--

When going through the binders, The Spine noticed that several years were missing. Rabbit and The Jon passed them off as being very boring years. It helped that The Spine had always been very selective with what he put into them, and many years had only a few pages in them.

\--

Steve couldn't sleep. He was reading in the living room, some old book that Michael had left on the coffee table. A war book was a surprising choice for the cheerful dude, but not actually all that surprising when Steve saw it was a history of both world wars. Figuring that it would put him to sleep in an instant, Steve starts to read, but instead he sees in the table of contents that there's a slim chapter dedicated to the Walter Bots and he ends up reading that, then staring out the window for several minutes.

Heavy feet make the walls shake very slightly as they pass the living room, then turn and come back. "Steve?"

"Yeah, The Spine?" Steve asks, rubbing his eyes and trying to smile. "What's up? Well, you, obviously. What time is it?"

"Bit past midnight," The Spine says. "I was in the library." He nodded at the book in Steve's hand, a gesture that Steve realized he had picked up from Steve himself. "I see you're doing a bit of reading yourself."

Steve shrugged. "I couldn't sleep, I was trying to bore myself into it."

"It doesn't look like it worked."

Steve shook his head. "No."

The Spine hesitated. "Is there anything I can do?" 

Steve's eyes strayed to the pile of movies in the cabinet underneath the television, thinking for a long moment. "I think there is, yes."

\--

In several of the binders, there is a page of seeming gibberish. It took The Spine about two hours to break his own code, but once he did he found that the gibberish was actually notes about the current humans from that year. In the one labelled 2009, there was a page that read this: 

Steve Negrete. Enjoys videogames from the early 1990s as well as role-playing dice games.

Infrequent insomniac: watching movies with him helps. Preference for embarrassing Disney musicals though will watch classics on occasion. Do not mention Casablanca.

Do not ask if his dreads are dragons. 

Slip quotes from the movies into casual conversation to draw his attention. Do not be obvious about it; he will catch on and then the game will be up. 


	4. Day 4: The Adventures of Snake!Spine!

Michael stared miserably as the mailman drove up the snow-covered road, stopped by the Walter mailbox, and then drove away again. 

"Why-why the long face?" Rabbit asked, peering out the window to see what was bothering him. 

"I'm pretty sure the mailman just left my birthday present in the box."

Rabbit grinned. "That's great news! Wait, if it's such great news, why aren't you smiling?"

Michael gestured at the snow. "It's a long walk, the path is covered with ice, and I don't have any snow gear. At all. None. Because this is San Diego. It shouldn't snow here."

Rabbit hummed thoughtfully. "Tha's a shame." He thought for a moment, and then yelled, "NORMAN!" is a surprisingly loud voice, right next to Michael's ear. 

Norman appeared seconds later in that unnerving way of his, putting his oven mitt back onto his horribly deformed lobster hand. "What's up, Rabbit?"

"Do we have any snow gear around the house?" 

Michael could have smacked himself. He might now have brought any snow gear when he moved in, but the Walter mansion was regularly invaded by puppy sized ants and had a hall full of masks that talked to you. Of course they would have snow gear here! 

In the end, Michael got a thick jacket, boots in the perfect size that he resolved to ask Annie if he could keep, bright purple pants filled with down, and a hat with far too many bobbly bits on it. 

"You're missing something," Rabbit said thoughtfully. "But I c-can't tell what."

Normal snapped his fingers. Michael wished he would never do that again. "You're missing a scarf!"

Rabbit grinned and ran down the hall, yelling, "Wait right there Michael I have the perfect thing!!"

He returned a moment later, with a rather deeper voice yelling, "Rabbit put me back, this isn't funny!" at him. Michael nearly buckled under the sudden weight as Rabbit draped The Spine's head and spine around his neck. 

"What???" Michael asked, instinctively grabbing at The Spine to keep him from sliding around and choking him. 

The Spine sighed heavily. "Every time it snows, he does this. Every time. Every single time. All of them. Every time."

Michael had to admit that, even wearing all the layers he was, The Spine really was a warm addition. He thought he'd be colder because, you know, metal, but the electricity running through him kept him nice and toasty, like a laptop struggling to run a high definition video game. 

"Just get it over with," The Spine grumbled. 

Norman snapped a picture.


	5. Day 5: Feels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: The Spine dies.

There's a glitch in the bots. Both stage mode and music mode are too complicated for their workings to support both at the same time. In stage mode, they have to gauge the audience's reactions and act to match their energy levels, picking out individual people to banter with, winking at just the right moment for the people with cameras. In music mode, they have to constantly be aware of the other bots (easy because of the Wifi) and of the humans (not so easy because of clumsiness) to harmonize and move in unison. To perform, they constantly switch back and forth between the two modes, each switch taking only a few seconds.

Sometimes, however, one of them will get caught in between, which is no problem under normal circumstances. Michael just casually walks up and rewinds them, and that's that. 

This time, Michael curses under his breath and The Jon whines nervously, while Rabbit uses his megaphone to shout, "Everyone calm down and exit the building in an orderly-derly fashion!" People are screaming and smoke is beginning to fill the room. 

"Michael," Sam says, grabbing the guitars. The drumkit is too unwieldy to move, and Steve already has the keyboard. "Michael come on, the building is burning."

"Exactly," Michael grunts. "We don't exactly have a push-cart that can carry him, you know." The first thing he would do once they got back to the mansion was seek one out. There had to be one somewhere in that place.  In the meantime, he frantically tried to get The Spine back to normal mode. It was getting hotter and he wasn't sure if it was the fire or the exertion. 

Exertion, he decided optimistically.

"Michael," The Jon says after a few minutes, "Michael the room is filling with smoke, Michael, you can't breathe that."

"I'm not leaving him here!" Michael exclaims.

The Jon frowns. "Michael, he's made out of titanium." 

Oh. 

Right. 

Michael wipes his hands on his jumpsuit, looks around the slowly darkening room, and then calmly says, "Let's go, then."

\--

The Jon knows that The Spine is made out of titanium, but not all of him is. The delicate inner wirings can be melted, the electronics fried, and even the blue matter core can react to heat. 

However, even later when Michael hugs him tight and says, "It's not your fault, it's not, it isn't your fault," The Jon doesn't feel completely guilty for misleading Michael.

The Spine wouldn't have wanted Michael to die for him.


	6. Day 6: Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As I said on Tumblr: "That turned out a bit more anime than I intended..."

Steve casually left a Netflix DVD out on the kitchen counter. The Spine replaced it with a memory stick, which was replaced with a note that read "Nah. How about some Tarantino?" which was replaced with "No. Not after last time." 

They whispered back and forth during rehearsals a bit, being surprisingly sneaky about it considering that everyone in the band was a huge gossip just thirsting for something to expose. It ended with narrowed glances at each other and Steve making sword motions that he cut off quickly when Rabbit caught it out of the corner of his eye.

"What'cha doin', Steve?" He asked, tilting his whole body in the engineer's direction.

"Sound stuff," Steve said pragmatically. 

"Like what?" 

Steve performed Eyebrow Elevation Tactic #12, in which he looked at Rabbit like Rabbit was an idiot and Rabbit dropped the subject. 

It almost worked. 

"Hey, The Jon," Rabbit called. 

The Spine groaned. Ten minutes were wasted as the two bots tried to pry out of Steve what exactly he had been doing. Michael just looked knowingly at The Spine and chuckled. 

"Could be worse," Michael said quietly. "Steve could have _told_ him, and then they'd want to watch Pirates of the Caribbean with you." 

(Keeping the movie nights a secret from Rabbit and The Jon was usually fairly easy. Keeping it from Michael and Sam was harder. To be fair, that was probably because Michael and Sam didn't really care and didn't like the kinds of movies they watched, while Rabbit and The Jon would invade and colonize their new territory with puns and comments on the actor's hair. Steve and The Spine tended to cancel movie night when the other bots found out.)

"Hey, as fun as all that is, can we get back to the music?" Sam finally interrupted.

"Why is it such a darn secret, is all I'm asking," Rabbit whined. "It's rude ta be gesturin' at us behind our backs!"

Steve performed Fingers to Forehead #4. It involved rubbing his forehead in such a way that intimated that he had a headache, which he usually did. "For the last time, there was no gesturing, can we get back to work now?"

"Fine, grumpypants," Rabbit grumbled. 

\--

The Spine meandered down towards the second TV room around 10 o' clock, once The Jon was shut down and Rabbit had disappeared towards some unknown part of the mansion with his accordion. Steve was already there, his bowl of popcorn already popped, peppered, and buttered. He tossed a blanket over at the couch and then asked, "So? Did we decide or not?"

"We didn't," The Spine said. 

Steve thought for a second. "A few episodes of White Collar? My cousin really likes it and keeps gushing about how hot one of the actors is."

The Spine shrugged. "Sure, why not. What's it about?"

Steve frowned. "Well, according to my cousin it's about a con man and an FBI Agent that are always a few seconds from tearing off each others' clothes, but I'm pretty sure she's a liar."

The Spine groaned. "If this is going to end up like Time Cop-"

"Hey, I apologized for that. I apologized _a lot_."

Steve pulled up Netflix. The Spine sat in the center of the couch, because Steve liked to lean on the arm of the couch but also didn't like a lot of distance from the person he was sitting next to. The S.O.U.N.D. engineer liked to talk during movies. 

Well, to be honest, The Spine had actually compared Steve's talking during movies with the whole band and movies with just him, and had found that Steve talked more when it was just him. Probably because he didn't want to disturb everyone else watching the movie, The Spine figured. 

"Alright," Steve said, turning off the lights and settling in with his popcorn. "Let's see if my cousin has good taste or not."

"Time Cop," The Spine muttered. 

"How often am I going to have to apologize for that?"

"Much more than this. You haven't properly groveled yet."

Steve grinned. 

The next hour was actually pretty quiet, except for a few exclamations from Steve along the lines of 'Okay, I'll admit, that guy is pretty hot,'   
'No, that's impossible,'  
'Those guards are awful at their jobs,'  
'That is an amazing car he just jacked,'  
'Wait is that the FBI agent- no, no I'm going to stop thinking about it,'   
'Did he SERIOUSLY just find an apartment by going to a thrift store,'   
'No you idiots don't leave him alone he's going to- what did I tell you, he's dead. Good job guys, you _tried_.'  
and 'Woah, that was some random eye-candy.'

The Spine found that he enjoyed the show more than he was expecting to. The plot was more than passably interesting and the dialogue was snappy, and despite Steve's derision most of it made sense. Not to mention that, when Steve suggested they watch the second episode, Steve's blinking began to become more frequent and he suppressed a few yawns.

The Spine knew that Steve had problems with sleeping, though Steve didn't discuss them with anyone. Whether or not the engineer knew that The Spine knew was up in the air, because while he said nothing he almost always suggested a movie night after a night of being unable to sleep. It could have been that he had just noticed that it tended to put him to sleep, it could have been that The Spine never made him feel weak, it could have been that watching movies while tired was apparently hilarious. The Spine couldn't say which explanation he liked, but he appreciated Steve's trust. 

As the second episode went on, Steve seemed to melt a little more into the couch, leaning his chin on his hand, then his head on his arm, then his head on the armrest. As the episode ended he slurred something and The Spine wordlessly got up to put the next one on. When he turned around again, Steve had dragged his legs up onto the sofa, bending his knees and leaving just enough space for The Spine. 

Steve was snoring by ten minutes in, and The Spine made a note of the time so he could move once Steve had entered R.E.M. sleep. The engineer had impeccable hearing, as a S.O.U.N.D. engineer should, and he had woken him before by moving too early. 

He settled in to wait, watching the handsome con man track down a stolen bible. 

Ten minute later, there were footsteps up the hall. They were heavy, which meant bot, and a bit uneven, which meant Rabbit. He pinged Rabbit on the wifi.

 **TheSpine** : Rabbit, go down a different hallway.  
 **Rabbit** : What? You don't own the hallway, I'll go down whatever hallway I please. I think I'll go down this hallway just to see what the fuss is. 

The footsteps got nearer, faster. The Spine winced. Of course, telling Rabbit to do anything was like telling Thing 1 and Thing 2 to clean up their mess.

 **TheSpine** : No, really, you might wake Steve up.

The footsteps stopped.

 **Rabbit** : What?  
 **Rabbit** : No, really, what? You know what that sounds like, right?  
 **TheSpine** : It's not like that. Steve has trouble sleeping and finds that watching a movie with a friend helps. Don't tell anyone, alright? I don't think he knows that I know.  
 **Rabbit** : But you're sitting there right next to him, how could you have missed it?  
 **TheSpine** : It's a pride thing.   
**Rabbit** : Steve does have a rather impressive mane.

The Spine groaned. Steve stirred, but didn't wake.

 **TheSpine** : Don't go telling everyone he has sleeping problems. I think he doesn't like having a problem he can't fix, and having everyone else know might make it worse for him.

There was a bit of a pause, before the footsteps went in the opposite direction.

 **Rabbit** : Alright, I'll keep it secret, unhealthy as that probably is.   
**Rabbit** : Are you sure you don't just want to spend more time with him, though?  
 **TheSpine** : You're lucky that I can't move, or I'd throttle you.

The Spine checked his timer. It should be safe to move, actually, so he tugged the blanket closer around Steve before slowly lowering the volume on the TV. He picked up the empty popcorn bowl from the floor and put it on the coffee table, and stopped.

Steve was looking at him, rather bemused. 

The Spine had no idea what to do. "I thought you were asleep," he said after a second, lowering his voice to resemble a whisper. 

Steve shrugged. "I was, kind of. Episode over?"

The Spine shook his head. "Close to."

Steve didn't look very impressed. Perhaps a little sad. "So how much of movie night is you wanting to actually watch the movie, and how much of it is you feeling obligated to spend time with me?"

The Spine hadn't thought of it that way. "I'd say it's around 50% wanting to watch the movie and 50% _wanting_ to spend time with you, actually."

Steve blinked. "What."

The Spine executed Eyebrow Elevation Tactic #3, in which he expresses somewhat kindly that Steve is a moron. "Is it surprising that I like you?"

Steve looked away after a moment. "If I say yes, will I sound like I'm fishing for affection?"

The Spine stared. "Steve. You are witty, surprisingly kind, and an amazing engineer. I only have to be in your presence for a few moments if I'm broken before you realize that something is wrong and start to fix it, and unlike some past engineers you've never made me feel like I wasn't a person even if you have your arm halfway into my chest trying to get a gear to turn properly."

Steve looked kind of like the silver automaton had just hit him with a baseball bat of affection. 

The Spine nodded. "I guess it was surprising that I like you. Do I need to say it explicitly? I like you, Steve." 

Steve seemed to remember that some form of response was probably appropriate. He sat up, scooting back and leaning on one arm, fussing with his bandana with the other. "I, um, great, wow, uh, thanks? I like you too, by the way, for being all, uh, I don't know what to say."

The Spine grinned. "You could say 'flawless.'"

"I consider your dislike of Star Wars a very big flaw."

"And yet I continue to like you despite the fact that you consider that travesty actually entertaining."

Steve looked rather uncomfortable. "You don't have to remind me every few minutes from now on, I think I got it."

"Good." The Spine turned to check the episode. It had ended while they weren't looking. "Next episode?"


	7. Day 7: Humans --> Robots AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Character death! It's 1950 y'all, what did you expect.

Mikel creeps through the laboratory halls, his Wifi off and his footsteps muffled by a few layers of cloth. Behind him, Professor Hottie and P. A. Walter II whisper back and forth about the readings on the small device they're holding, but Mikel only listens with half attention. The rest of it is on making sure that they're unobserved. He hold up a hand, and the whispering stops. 

He mimes walking around a corner, holds up two fingers, and makes a clear 'stay' gesture.

Professor Hottie shakes his head vigorously. Mikel nods, just as vigorously, flips them a peace sign, and creeps around the corner. 

A monster is waiting on the other side, its heavy breathing audible even to humans at this distance, and Mikel jumps on it to break its neck. It howls, Mikel growls in frustration, and the monster _snaps_. 

"Alright, the time for stealth is over," Walter III says, and they sprint down the hall. Mikel easily dispatches all the horrors in their paths, until they come across a small, nervous-looking man.

"Norman," Professor Hottie growls. 

Norman shakes his head. "This really isn't the time. You have to stop him, he's trying to reverse engineer the device, and they don't listen to me, I'm pretty sure he's gonna blow it up before-"

That's all Mikel needs to hear. He sprints ahead, deaf to Norman's shouts to wait, and Hottie and Walter II are right behind him as he enters the lab. 

As fate would have it, that's the exact moment when Ignatius slips, wires crossing where they shouldn't, and reality twists itself into a pretzel. Mikel is glad he's powered by Purple Matter for the half second it takes him to remember that Hottie and Walter II are powered by nothing more than heartbeats and electricity and that a Blue Matter exposure of this magnitude isn't exactly good for keeping either of those things steady. 

It's hard to turn and check on them, however, when space itself is turning inside out and horrible things are trying to rip his legs off while Pappy screams and fire-covered Zubats leap on Rabbit's fallen core- 

The core-

He reaches it, and finds that there's a bot attached. 

No, it's not Rabbit's core, and the bot drags him out of the laboratory, to where space is still making sense, and Mikel wants to help him as he goes back inside but he is experiencing an unfortunate lack of legs. 

The bot drags a misshapen form out next, followed by what is definitely Peter Walter III. 

Mikel has already activated his Wifi and called for help, so he asks, "Who are you?"

The bot stares at him, cocking his head to the side. The action makes the antennae attached to his head sway. 

Mikel looks at the people next to him, then back at the building that is slowly crumpling in on itself. "There are only two. There are supposed to be five."

The bot's head cocks further, and then he beeps. 

Mikel sighs, leaning back. "You're not even a day old, are you? Well, this is a hell of a welcome. Don't worry, we'll throw a party or something for you later, and we can pretend that _that_ is your birthday."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder that HatchWorth is still in the vault and that this Steve has already caused the death of three people.


End file.
